We are exploring Kibble based diets. Kibble is regular dog food, the kind you get in the supermarket and probably the kind you grew up with your parents feeding their dogs.

This is widely regarded as the best food to feed your pooch and is approved and endorsed by vets around the world. The main reason why they love this diet is because it is a ‘complete’ food source for your dog. What this means is that it meets all of the nutritional needs your pet has including minerals and vitamins. 

There is a very large BUT attached to kibble diets and this is that all kibbles are not created equal. Dog food is a very competitive industry and let's be frank, most pet parents have no idea what they are feeding their dogs or how to understand the label on the back of the pack. This is not a pet parent's failure but rather a failure of the industry as a whole, who have been loading kibble with poor, filler ingredients and calling it food. 

We are going to take you through a couple of things to understand when reading these labels - things to look out for especially around quality of ingredients. 

Absolute no goes

• Animal derivatives 
• Beef meal, lamb meal, chicken meal - any of the meat “meals”
• Food colourants (this is a trick to make the food look better than it is)
• Oils and fats (like veggie oil or chicken fat are often added to make the food more palatable for dogs because without it they wouldn’t touch it)

Tips and tricks

• Add fresh veg into your dog's food
• When you go to a food shop, buy a veg for the week for your dog - broccoli, carrots, green beans (a fave), mange tout, cabbage, lettuce, sweet potato. There are so many to choose from. 
• Cook one of them up and add a couple of tablespoons at each meal during the week. Switch the veg up next week!.

Look for a dog food that specifies

• What type of meat is in it -  beef tripe, chicken breast 
• Look for worlds like ‘freshly prepared’, and ‘whole’

• Added veg like sweet potato and lentils
• Added plants and herbs like alfalfa and dandelion and milk thistle are great for detox and digestion 

If you have any questions about what you are feeding your dog give us a holla on our insta @guddoglife 

Love and Licks,

Charley, Shuga, Basil and the Guddog gangl  xx